Have you ever wondered if the causes of mental illness are biological or psychological?
There is a large controversy on the topic of Mental Illnesses and whether or not it is impacted more as a psychological factor or a biological factor. Are the causes scientifically and biologically proven to be the cause of mental illness? Or is it all in your head? Both perspectives are equally just as valid, which has led to such controversial opinions on the topic. Mental illness is something that is occurring in more and more people all over the world as time goes on. It is occurring more and more in society today. This led to new methods being tested that haven’t before involving the subject of mental health.
In the biological aspect, biologists explain it in a way that is scientifically proven. Doctors will often assist the patient in understanding where the problem is originating in terms of biological chemical imbalances in the brain. It is easier to comprehend something that is scientifically proven and shown. It makes more sense if a doctor were to show you a comparison from a healthy brain versus a mentally ill brain. They will look completely different from each other, the chemical imbalances show as a different color, making it very visible to spot the difference. Some people believe that showing mental health from a biological aspect will help terminate some of the stressors people with mental illness suffer with. Big parts of mental illness is people suffering with it but are often fearful of getting the proper help because of this social stigma and the feeling of being judged or discriminated for something that is out of your control. It might have an effect to decrease the negative stigma around those who suffer from this type of illness. Showing mental illness from a biological perspective might just make skeptics feel some sympathy towards those who suffer if they don’t themselves. The public’s knowledge of biological causes of mental illness is not very much known. People believe the correlation between mental disability and biology gives this pitiful impression and they are known as weak or flawed. And nobody likes to feel like this, life is difficult and stressful enough, nobody wants to feel ‘different’ or ‘judged’ on top of it.
While the psychological aspect, takes a slightly different approach to the causes of the illness. There is a pre conceived notion that mental illness is all in your head. People that are not diagnosed with a mental disability tend to flaunt around saying they do in fact have one. This makes it hard for the people that actually are suffering with a disability because it makes it seem not so bad. The people that go around flaunting about “anxiety” or depression” are usually the ones that are not diagnosed. People who do indeed suffer with the illness deal with it in their own way with a doctor’s help, not needing attention from friends or social media.
Unfortunately, the ‘social stigma’ towards mental illness affects a lot of people. Danny C. K. Lam, Paul M. Salkovskis, and Hilary M. C. Warwick are the leaders of the study and came out with interesting ways to test these theories. During this study, 110 participants were chosen, and no students took part in this experiment. There were three different version questionnaires, and they were distributed at random. They chose people of all different ethnic background. Most were White, at 77.3%, 10% were African American, and 12.7% were Asian. Both genders were included and ages of the participants ranged from 18-62 years of age. The one requirement that was made for this study was none of the participants were allowed to have worked with any psychiatric or mental health settings. The questions were aimed towards surveying their attitudes towards any mental health conditions. The questions included four different categories, cognitive strategies, problem solving, delay of gratification, and self-efficacy expectations. The questions were very carefully written in three different ways. The first version included saying that research is suggesting that biologically based disorders might be the end result of genetics factors. The second version suggested that psychological problems might be the result of environment risk factors. And in the third version, said that the causes of all mental disorders are not yet very clear based on the studies being done. To make the participant relate more to the disorder, they phrased the questions by asking to picture someone they knew of suffered from the disorder. Each participant was required to give a rating from 0-100 based on their take on the disorder. 0 indicates a very positive attitude and 100 indicate a very negative attitude. In other words, 0 meant 100% curable and 100 meant not curable by any means.
Results –
The questionnaire produced very different and less negative perspectives according to the public’s opinions. The control group and the biological disorders were extremely similar to each other. Providing a psychological explanation proving mental health disorders is proving to be a positive perspective within the public. In other words, the biological factor did not quite change anything. The public’s perception implied that every form of a mental disorder were initially the same, regardless of what caused it. There was no information shown that resources would change the public’s perspective towards people who suffer from such disorders. There are a couple ways of understanding these opinions of psychiatric disorders. The initial thought people have about mental disorders is that it is biological, implying that providing a biological perspective does not typically factor in when involving the control group of the experiment. It is more about the social stigma of mental health disorders. The best information given about psychiatric disorders is leaned more towards psychological, rather than biological or chemically imbalanced.
Read about the study here
Read about the study here
References
Lam, Danny C. K. et al. (2005, October) An experimental investigation of the impact of
biological versus psychological explanations of the cause of “mental illness”. Journal of
Mental Health, 14(5), 453-464.
Paper Reviewed: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638230500270842?journalCode=ijmh20
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